The Foundation of the Settlement
To anyone in touch with Malay traditions and local history, as Sir Stamford Raffles was, the existence of the old port of Singapura must have been a familiar fact. It…
From: 1703 C.E. To: 1819 C.E.
Location: Singapore
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From “The Foundation of the Settlement” in One Hundred Years of Singapore by C. O. Blagden.
The Foundation of the Settlement
By C. O. Blagden, M.A., Reader in Malay, University of London.
To anyone in touch with Malay traditions and local history, as Sir Stamford Raffles was, the existence of the old port of Singapura must have been a familiar fact. It is the peculiar merit of the new founder that he applied this piece of common knowledge to the special requirements of his own time.
The refounding of Singapore resembles in some degree the incident of Columbus and the egg: another man might have done it equally well, but did not. Already in the year 1703 the travelling Scot, Alexander Hamilton, had had the place offered to him as a gift by the then Sultan of Johore, and remarked, with characteristic prudence and foresight, that “it could be of no use to a private person, tho’ a proper place for a company to settle a colony in, lying in the center of trade, and being accommodated with good rivers and safe harbours, so conveniently situated that all winds served shipping, both to go out and come in.”
In 1818 the position of affairs in the Straits and the Far East was a critical one for the British East India Company. Under the treaties which were framed after the Great War of those days, we had agreed to restore to the Dutch, in substance, their great island empire which during that war we had captured from them and from the French, the temporary masters of the Netherlands. In that retrocession Malacca and its dependencies were comprised, and Malacca was, in fact, transferred on the 21st September 1818. The change meant that, unless something were promptly done, the Straits would fall under the command of the Dutch, and British trade would again be excluded from the Eastern Archipelago.
Raffles saw the danger, and was determined to strain every nerve and stretch every point in order to prevent such a catastrophe. From the Government of Bengal he succeeded in obtaining for himself a commission to look out for a port to the south of Malacca which should serve as an emporium for British trade after Malacca was given up. The Governor-General, in granting the commission, hedged it in with a careful proviso against doing anything that would raise objections on the part of the Dutch authorities. As a subordinate government, Calcutta could not take it upon itself to thwart the policy of Westminster.
There are, however, occasions on which a Nelson will put his blind eye to the telescope, and at the decisive moment Raffles determined to follow that recent precedent. Indeed, it is difficult to see how he could have carried out the main object of his instructions without in some degree infringing them in the letter: for the two things were incompatible. The Bengal Government wanted a port, and at the same time desired to avoid international complications. Yet it is pretty clear that, whatever site had been selected in that part of the world, the Dutch would have been sure to protest. At first Riau was considered, but when the news came that the Dutch were about to occupy it or had already done so, the thoughts of the Bengal Government, prompted no doubt by Raffles, turned to Johore (which then included Singapore) as a possible alternative. Having received his final instructions, and guided by what he knew of Singapore's former importance. Raffles left Calcutta about the 10th December 1818, arrived at Penang on the 30th, organised his little expedition in six ships, and departed for the south on the 19th January 1819.
That he had a pretty clear view of his objective appears plainly from his correspondence at this time with the Governor of Penang (who disapproved of the whole project) and with the Chief Secretary to the Government of Bengal, in the course of which he points out the special advantages of Singapore. But already on the 12th December he had written a private letter to Marsden, wherein he says: “My attention is principally turned to Johore, and you must not be surprised if my next letter to you is dated from the site of the ancient city of Singapura.” However, his mind was apparently not finally made up, and he was ready to visit other places that might possibly be suitable for his purpose.
Accompanied by Major William Farquhar, late Resident of Malacca, who had left Penang a few days earlier, and whom he overtook in the course of the voyage, he put in at the Kerimon Islands, near the western entrance of Singapore Straits (as recommended by Farquhar), but found them unsatisfactory, and set sail towards the Johore River. On the afternoon of the 28th January the little flotilla came to an anchorage off St. John’s Island, near Singapore. That same day Raffles went on shore and had an interview with the Temenggong, the local Malay chief, who had settled on the island some years before with a few score of followers. It would seem that from that moment the matter was decided in Raffles’s mind; his plans, if somewhat vague till then, now took definite and final shape. Singapore was to be his new foundation, come what might, for at that instant he fully realised its topographical advantages, and saw that he had indeed found what he had been in search of.
Raffles was by temperament an enthusiast, but he can hardly have been unaware that a settlement in that place would very probably raise protests on the part of the Dutch Government. Local politics were in a tangle. For about a century the historic Sultanate or Empire of Johore, which included also Pahang, the Riau-Lingga Archipelago, and much else besides, as well as Johore proper and its island dependency of Singapore, had been in something like a chronic state of dissolution.
This was mainly due to the impotence of the Malay Government in face of the turbulent intrigues of a number of powerful and enterprising Bugis chiefs from Celebes, who had settled in the Riau-Lingga Archipelago during the eighteenth century. The titular Malay Sultan resided in the island of Lingga; but the real power behind the throne" was the Bugis Yang-di-pertuan Muda (or Viceroy) of Riau, and the two principal Malay dignitaries, the Bendahara and the Temenggong, had virtually become territorial chiefs in Pahang and Johore respectively, though they still owned their allegiance to the Sultanate. That phantom throne, moreover, was suffering from a disputed succession. Some few years earlier the younger son of the late Sultan, in the temporary absence of his elder brother, had been seated upon it by the Bugis Viceroy, who was friendly to the Dutch. But this act of state had not by any means received the unanimous consent of the. leading Malay high officials.
However, the new Sultan had been formally acknowledged by the British East India Company in 1818, a treaty having been made with him in August of that year. But that arrangement had been forcibly overridden in November by Dutch interference under the claim that he was a vassal of the Government of the Netherlands, on the strength of former treaties made by the Dutch East India Company with one of his predecessors. The principal British authorities contended that such former treaties were obsolete, and were not revived by the changes consequent on the peace, and the matter was under discussion at the time. Meanwhile, the Sultan’s elder brother had taken no active steps to assert his pretensions, but was living quietly as a private individual at Riau.
Raffles determined to avail himself of this imbroglio in order to further his plans. He at once sent Farquhar to Riau on a mission to the Viceroy, and a message was also despatched to the disappointed heir, Tengku Husain, generally known on account of his seniority of birth by the title of Tengku Long. Farquhar left on the 30th January, and on the same day a provisional agreement was made at Singapore between Raffles and the Temenggong, acting both for himself and for the Sultan, that is to say the claimant Tengku Long. In consideration of an annual payment to the Temenggong of three thousand dollars, the Company were to be allowed to establish a trading station at Singapore or some other place within the Government of Singapore and Johore, the Company agreeing to protect the Temenggong, and the latter undertaking not to enter into relations with any other nation nor allow foreigners into his country.
Pending the arrival of the new Sultan, who was expected to come soon, the Company could select a place to land their forces and materials and hoist their flag.
Farquhar returned from his mission on the 3rd February. Though he had failed to secure the active support of the Bugis Viceroy, who felt bound by his recent agreement with the Dutch, he had at any rate gained his passive acquiescence. Meanwhile, on the ist February, Tengku Long had arrived and paid Raffles a visit, and on the following day Raffles fully explained the situation to him. In pursuance of the understanding then come to, a definite treaty was made on the 6th February between Raffles, for the British East India Company, of the one part, and Tengku Long, now formally proclaimed under the title of Sultan Husain Muhammad Shah, and the Temenggong, of the other.
Save that an annual payment of five thousand dollars was allotted to the new Sultan, the treaty did little more than confirm and slightly amplify in some particulars the provisional agreement of the 30th January. It was eventually, in its turn, superseded by a further treaty (dated the 2nd August 1824 and ratified on the 19th November of that year), which enlarged the permission to establish a trading station on a very limited portion of the island of Singapore into the complete cession of the whole island, and its adjoining waters and islets, in full sovereignty and property, to the East India Company. Nevertheless, the 6th February 1819 is the true birthday of Singapore as a British Settlement. On the following day Raffles, the new founder of Singapore, having done what he had set out to do, departed from his new Settlement, leaving it in the charge of Farquhar as Resident and Commandant.
It cannot be denied that in all this transaction there was much that inevitably invited criticism from several different points of view, and in actual fact the controversy that it raised embittered the rest of the founder’s career and probably shortened his life. On the technical question of the supremacy claimed by the Dutch over Singapore in virtue of their ancient, and now renewed, relations with the Sultans of Johore, there was a good deal to be said on both sides. It has all been said, at great length, elsewhere, and need not be repeated here. Admitting, also, that Tengku Husain had the better claim to the throne, it did not lie within the scope of Raffles ’s commission to regulate the succession of the Johore Empire, a necessary condition precedent (as it happened) to the acquisition of Singapore. The whole transaction was essentially an act of state, not to be justified by any formal legalities, but only, if at all, on wider grounds of public policy, and retrospectively by its results.
On the other hand, the Dutch had had relations with the Johore Empire for upwards of two centuries, and had held Malacca from 1641 to 1795. Yet during the whole of that time they had never availed themselves of their opportunities to turn the natural advantages of Singapore to account. It would, of course, have competed with their Settlement of Malacca, which itself was cramped and checked in its development by the jealous policy of Batavia, their colonial capital. So when they raised objections the moment anyone else tried to do what they had neglected to undertake, their protests sounded rather like those of the proverbial dog in the manger.
There was, however, in this case the important difference that at the critical moment the objector was not in possession of the actual matter in dispute. Possession, as we all know, is nine points of the law, and in the end it prevailed. In 1824, after many protests, the Dutch Government withdrew its objections, and entered into a give-and-take treaty, which settled the question in our favour. But much heartburning remained, and the traces of it are by no means extinct even now: that fact is generally ignored by English writers, but it is desirable that it should be fully realised.
Yet, taking a broader view, it may fairly be asked whether, as against any technical claims based on a more or less disputed title, the real benefits resulting from the establishment of the new free port do not decisively bring down the scale. For the foundation of Singapore struck the death-knell of the bad old system of commercial monopoly on which the Dutch Colonial Empire had too long subsisted, and forced it to adopt the more modern and humane methods which have contributed so materially to its present flourishing and prosperous condition. In view of these results, the descendants of the contending parties of 1819 may well join hands in accepting an accomplished fact, which for the world at large, as well as for themselves, has been of such enormous practical benefit. After a hundred years, we may hope that this old controversy will close on a note of friendship and mutual goodwill.
Nor need we now use harsh language about the British authorities who at the time disapproved of Raffles’s brilliant but highly irregular tactics. They were immediately let in for a peck of troubles, and they cannot reasonably be blamed for not foreseeing as clearly as he did the prospective advantages of his action. But to the founder belongs the great credit that he did foresee those advantages, that in his mind’s eye he pictured to himself Singapore as it is to-day, and decided that for such an end much must be risked; that he faced obloquy, international controversy, the censure of his official superiors, and the ruin of his own career for an ideal which seemed to him to outweigh all these, and not for any personal reward.
When he retired from the public service, a broken man, that memory was his solace, and we, who have profited by his brilliant stroke of genius, are in duty bound to recognise the grandeur of the conception which a century of realisation has made familiar to us.
Blagden, C. O. “The Foundation of the Settlement” in One Hundred Years of Singapore. Edited by Walter Makepeace et al., John Murray, 1921.
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